| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: wearing his dress-coat and a white tie. He was smiling gently and
looked into his wife's face joyfully, as in old days; his face
was radiant.
"I have just been defending my thesis," he said, sitting down and
smoothing his knees.
"Defending?" asked Olga Ivanovna.
"Oh, oh!" he laughed, and he craned his neck to see his wife's
face in the mirror, for she was still standing with her back to
him, doing up her hair. "Oh, oh," he repeated, "do you know it's
very possible they may offer me the Readership in General
Pathology? It seems like it."
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Yates Pride by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: approaching. He was a large man clad in gray, and he was
swinging an umbrella. Somehow the swing of that umbrella, even
from a distance, gave an impression of embarrassment and boyish
hesitation. Eudora did not know him at first. She had expected
to see the same Harry Lawton who had gone away. She did not
expect to see a stout, middle-aged man, but a slim youth.
However, as they drew nearer each other, she knew; and curiously
enough it was that swing of the tightly furled umbrella which
gave her the clue. She knew Harry because of that. It was a
little boyish trick which had survived time. It was too late for
her to draw back, for he had seen her, and Eudora was keenly
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Iliad by Homer: gained your end, and have roused fleet Achilles. One would think
that the Achaeans were of your own flesh and blood."
And Juno answered, "Dread son of Saturn, why should you say this
thing? May not a man though he be only mortal and knows less than
we do, do what he can for another person? And shall not I--
foremost of all goddesses both by descent and as wife to you who
reign in heaven--devise evil for the Trojans if I am angry with
them?"
Thus did they converse. Meanwhile Thetis came to the house of
Vulcan, imperishable, star-bespangled, fairest of the abodes in
heaven, a house of bronze wrought by the lame god's own hands.
The Iliad |
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: icicle in the glow of its fierce warmth. You are self-reproached at your
own chilliness and want of reciprocity. The next day, when you go to warm
your hands a little, you find a few ashes! 'Tis a long love and cool
against a short love and hot; men, at all events, have nothing to complain
of."
"You speak so because you do not know men," said Em, instantly assuming the
dignity of superior knowledge so universally affected by affianced and
married women in discussing man's nature with their uncontracted sisters.
"You will know them too some day, and then you will think differently,"
said Em, with the condescending magnanimity which superior knowledge can
always afford to show to ignorance.
|
